Santa Cruz Acupuncture – Lela C Carneyhttp://santacruzacupuncturelc.com
Offering Acupuncture, Chinese and Functional Medicine for Santa Cruz, Capitola, Soquel, Aptos, Watsonville, Los Gatos and San Jose, CaliforniaTue, 24 Dec 2013 20:46:31 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3magnets to facilitate healing bone fractureshttp://santacruzacupuncturelc.com/magnets-to-facilitate-healing-bone-fractures/
http://santacruzacupuncturelc.com/magnets-to-facilitate-healing-bone-fractures/#respondFri, 26 Oct 2012 17:25:32 +0000http://santacruzacupuncturelc.com/?p=146Continue reading →]]>My acupuncture colleagues and I use small (800 gauss) magnets on either side of a break to help energy cross the fracture and speed bone reweaving. (north side down on one side, south side down on the other side of the break)

“The primary actions of magnetic fields work through calcium metabolism, through the movement of calcium in the tissues. The earliest FDA-approved mag- netic devices were for bone healing. The magnets help to move osteoblasts into a fracture, for example.. . . magnetic fields increase osteoblasts; they increase osteogenesis.”

]]>http://santacruzacupuncturelc.com/magnets-to-facilitate-healing-bone-fractures/feed/0Helping injuries with the Figure 8 circulation of qi: #2 circling wrists/ankleshttp://santacruzacupuncturelc.com/helping-injuries-with-the-figure-8-circulation-of-qi-2-circling-wristsankles/
http://santacruzacupuncturelc.com/helping-injuries-with-the-figure-8-circulation-of-qi-2-circling-wristsankles/#respondSat, 24 Sep 2011 22:19:54 +0000http://santacruzacupuncturelc.com/?p=48Continue reading →]]>When I was in acupuncture school, a friend cut her hand badly when taking out the trash. Someone had put a broken glass in the trash can, it got covered with other trash and when she pushed down on the contents to make room for more, she sliced the tendons in the palm of her hand.

Her injured hand and wrist were taped and immobilized so the tendons could heal. Our acupuncture teacher and her qi gong teacher both suggested what they considered to be best way to send qi/energy of healing through her injured palm. They prescribed her circling the opposite wrist (sound familiar?) and also both of her ankles, many times several times a day. Moving the energy through the joints of her opposite hand/wrist and through both feet/ankles would keep the energy circulating in that figure 8 pattern and so it would also go through her injured, immobilized hand, speeding healing.

So if you have pain or injury in your left elbow, you can find sore points at the equivalent location around the right elbow. Or if you stub your right toe, there will be a surprisingly painful spot just at the same place on the left toe. (You may have to press around carefully until you find the right spot and the right angle — usually the angle of the force that caused the injury.)

BUT FIRST – and this is crucial: Be as calm and centered as you can be. Allow your breath to deepen into your belly. In other words, choose to reverse the process of tightening that happens automatically when we get hurt. Relaxing into the pain and fear, worry or upset allows the body to complete its inherent ability to heal and restore circulation/flow (of qi). Resisting the pain and disruption, pushing it away, charging on as though nothing happened, tends to make healing take longer because the area of the injury has shut down and shut out the capacity for healing.

In other words, the energy/qi flow to the injured area has been short circuited by the traumatic event. The Chinese say Bu tong, ze tong. Tong ze, bu tong (“No through, pain. Through, no pain. “) “WHERE THERE IS PAIN, THERE IS NO FREE FLOW (OF QI), AND WHERE THERE IS FREE FLOW THROUGH, THERE IS NO PAIN”.

So Miriam Lee taught me to use this principle to Stop, Breathe, Sense in to the flow of energy in your body and Press in a spiraling direction firmly but with loving kindness. How you press (calmly and tenderly, even though strongly) is as important as where you press — you will recognize the right spot(s) when you find them.

Make this brief time out a meditation of “mindfulness of the body in the body”, the Buddha’s first foundation of mindfulness. I promise you, it will speed recovery time.

A personal experience: One night in 1984 I dropped a large portable television on my right foot. I sat down, right there on the kitchen floor and allowed myself several deepening, releasing breaths — non-forcing, just letting myself settle into my breath and my breath settle back down in me. (When we are hurt our breathing naturally becomes big and shallow – a ‘fight or flight’ breath. With this time out, we are reclaiming our equally natural ‘rest and restore’ breath — getting out of sympathetic and back into the parasympathetic nervous system so healing can begin immediately.)

Then I began to explore the places on my opposite (left) foot that were ‘lit up’ in pain. Remember the figure 8 pattern of energy flow: sure enough, there were several amazingly tender spots, matching where the TV had hit my right foot. I began to carefully massage them, exploring which angle of pressure seemed to get to the most of the shock-y pain. I gradually increased the acupressure on each of these points until the left foot was throbbing as much as the right foot. (I was tracking the sensations on the injured side to see how it was changing in response to my efforts.)

About the time it felt like the left foot was more painful than the right – and full of a kind of energy charge, suddenly I felt an intense stream of electricity shooting out of all the toes on both feet. And then they were both pain free.

I knew then that the whole process of my body dealing with that injury had been completed. I stood up, finished moving the TV and woke the next morning with no trace of the accident, not even a bruise.

You can ask Rick Vail about another time when he stepped on my foot and I did this. He remains astounded to this day at seeing the bruising disappear. So there are at least 2 of us who can vouch for the fact that this can work amazingly well.

It’s not always so dramatic, and some injuries leave lacerations and even broken bones that take more time to heal. (And of course, be sure to stop any bleeding first – as calmly and with as deep breathing as you can.)

As bones are healing in their casts, periodically revisit the points on the opposite side to send the qi circulating in that figure 8 pattern through the fractures to facilitate rebuilding.

Another use of the figure 8 pattern: I tripped over a suitcase someone had placed behind me and landed on my elbow. Miriam Lee gave me a treatment below the opposite knee. While the needles were in, I dreamed that she came in and put another needle above the opposite knee, both points on the meridian that runs through the part of the knee that matched the equivalent meridian running through that side of my elbow. Again, with the energy able to go through again, no pain.